Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

We must take a balanced approach, significantly reducing the rate of expenditure on current day-to-day spending from 10% this year to 3.8% next year, by deferring discretionary capital spending, including holding off on further land acquisition and building on the decentralisation programme until the 6,000 public servants who are ready to relocate are in place in the next couple of years. We also had to consider and make decisions on raising taxes by €2 billion in net terms to end up with a general government deficit which is still high at 6.5% of gross domestic product.

The Fine Gael finance spokesman said last night that Fine Gael would not raise taxes but would bring in a budget with a 5.5% deficit. That can only mean it is in favour of further expenditure cuts totalling more than €4 billion because to reduce the deficit from 6.5% to 5.5% would cost more than €2 billion and Deputy Bruton disagrees with our tax raising measures which cost another €2 billion.

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